Neoartists weblog

Title: “From Oslo to Cape Town. A journey to personal landscapes”

Background to the concept: Early in his career, Issey Miyake (one of the most Sculptural and Fine Art oriented of designers) was fascinated by the Harris Tweed industry and became preoccupied with the complexity of the natural colours used by the Highland weavers. To capture some of that colour he sent and had ’staked out’, large pieces of linen on the ground in Scotland and returned to collect them some months later. He obtained the most delicate, natural ’staining’ of the linen in colours too ‘insubstantial’ to have been printed. This he turned into one of his early collections in Osaka.

You might guess from my own pictures that I am preoccupied by landscape and have wanted to experiment with alternate ways of engaging with it. This idea of Issey Miyake’s has always resonated with me and I thought that this might be a way of exploring some of its landscape potential.

General Idea: 

1.Contacts of Neoartists from around the world would be sent a package by me containing a meter of un-sized canvas or linen, a set of instructions on how and where to ‘deploy/stake-out’ this fabric and a deadline for the return of the fabric to their Neoartist contact. Their return package could also include location photographs, latitude/longitude and weather information, observations on light/colour/sky impressions - and in their local language - a title that to them epitomises the feelings that their ‘personal landscape’ evokes. (NB These contacts/friends do not need to be practicing artists!)

2. On receiving these packages each Neoartist should devise a method for stretching and/or mounting/framing the work so that any accompanying ‘information’ can be sympathetically integrated with the final piece for exhibition. (I would like to think that some text, prose or poetry might come back too.)

 

NB: Each Neoartist would be expected to bring their own slant/style/methodology to bear on the final product!

 3. So far, I have several people around the world who are interested in taking part:

 Oslo - Salford - Dublin - Cork - Cairo - Cape Town - ? – (Hence the provisional title)

 

The next step I guess would be to ask what members think of the idea and whether or not any of you think it has any value or potential.

Don’t forget, I’m only at the start of this idea taking shape and as you know yourself…… things change etc….. so it could wind up being very different in the end.

Let me know what you think initially or if you have any ideas to add to the general concept.

Hope I’m not infringing any procedures by post this on the general blog!!

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Martin Stynes, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.